Vignettes of an Age
by kanamiya-akira
Summary: What made Itachi. A short series of sketches of his life during the period after he killed the clan and before he came back. May be a bit confusing because it's not in chronological order but it'll work out, I promise. )


Ananta atte no ore da. Anata ga inakereba ore wa muryoku da.  
  
Title: The End to it All Author: Kanamiya Akira Fandom: Naruto Type: Angst/One-Shot Pairings: Het. Itachi/? Rating: PG-13 Disclaimer: Naruto is by Kishimoto Masashi. He has obviously gone to the dark side. Summary: Things are never black and white in the world. Itachi tries to remove himself from his quandary.  
  
Notes: I seem to have habits of writing in wee hours. Something just urges me to write. This one had entirely no inspiration/planning whatsoever. I just sat down and wrote. Upon seeing it the next day, I actually liked it for some reason. Seem to be getting up on the fanfic plateau. Hopefully, my A levels can be salvaged.  
  
She moves towards me as I bury my face in her long silky light brown hair. It smells faintly of jasmine but it is a haunting smell. The smell not of bubbling spring and laughter but of dead winter and sorrow. Her spirit takes me in and enthralls me in a way that I've never known before.  
  
Which is why I hate her. I love and hate her for captivating me. She is the most beautiful woman I've ever known or could ever know. She reads me like a book. She knows the cobble of my backbone to the taut muscles on my abdominal. She was the writer and the potter that moulded me and made me her creation. I'm imprinted with her name. It's not just physical. She knows my heart. She confirms my suspicions and doubts. In her I find my haven.  
  
But I'm a soul condemned to destroy and ravish. To eliminate any vestige of good in me and shred it unmercifully with my blade. I want power. Power to prove myself. To prove myself against them against them all, against her against her all.  
  
I have to raze and despoil her or I'll never be free.  
  
I'd just be that pathetic crying little boy.  
  
Her hand caresses my cloak and her soft body falls into my embrace. I plant a kiss on her neck. She's now mine, branded with my name, sealed in my authority. A prisoner convicted to the gallows.  
  
And I slide the knife into her back.  
  
It sickeningly finds its way in, as if it had a life of its own. Metal into flesh. It's a ravenous insatiable serpent. Twisting, grinding, pushing as blood spurts all over.  
  
Something in me seems to be crying out but I don't know what or why. Anyhow, it's smothered and suffocated like an infant child.  
  
Her lips are still warm on me and I feel a tear pelt onto and trickle down my face, mingling with the moisture where we meet.  
  
I've never seen her cry. Or smile like this before.  
  
"Live on, my little boy but don't let power ever corrupt you. Or you'll end up like me," she whispers softly with a sardonic and wry tinge. I feel wrenched like a wet cloth that is strangled, squeezed and contorted till its dry, till I'm emptied to nothingness. Her lips cover mine again before her body sinks to the tatami. The weight of her drags me down with her. Down, down, down.  
  
I had no idea that human life could be so fragile. That the untamable creature I had sought to strangulate and beat to death could be so easily vanquished.  
  
No, it wasn't she that has lost in this game of power that was but a construct of my desire. Once more, I had been soundly defeated by her, been affected by her. Now again, I will have to live my life in the shadow of hers while she has gone to some place better. She has discarded me like a piece of unwanted trash and I...I have to chase after her till eternity and yet, never be able to stake my claim over her. Because my life's ambition has evaporated in the sands of time, I can never know where to stop or lay down my blade.  
  
Once again, I've become the pitiful sight of a curled-up sniveling heap.  
  
It's a figure of weakness that I will try to but never be able to eliminate.  
  
End. R&R folks!  
  
Kiss...a Judas kiss but of course, that's too western so cannot write that. Also in the sense that she knows that he's going to kill her but she arises to meet it anyway.  
  
I used "jasmine" coz I always thought it had a haunting smell. However, in flower language, it means "I am too happy". Lolz. Or maybe can just read it as irony. Black black irony. 


End file.
